“Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd (RIM) is likely to preannounce poor February quarter results and forecast a ‘very weak’ May quarter on lower sales of its phones, according to Jefferies & Co analysts,” Sruthi Ramakrishnan reports for Reuters.

“‘There is a greater than 50 percent chance that RIM will negatively pre-announce the February quarter,’ said analyst Peter Misek,” Ramakrishnan reports. “Sales of both RIM’s low-end and higher-end phones continue to be challenged, with the company’s higher-end handsets doing poorly outside of enterprise sales on continued momentum of Apple Inc’s iPhone 4S and Google Inc powered Android smartphones, said Misek.”

Ramakrishnan reports, “The likely launch of the iPhone 5 ahead of the BB10 — which is expected in September — is particularly troubling, said Misek, who cut his price target on RIM’s U.S.-listed shares to $12 from $15.”

RIM may have had a good product in QNX but their time to execute effectively on it has passed. As horrid as Android is, it was good enough to rapidly consume the non-Apple smartphone market. RIM is only hanging around because they built up a stable of loyal customers.

It should be noted that Android is not built on a stable of loyal customers. Nearly all android settlers are buying it as a dumb phone replacement and use it as a glorified feature phone. There is a real possibility that Android could implode faster than RIM or Nokia given the right market conditions.

I worked for Wang Labs many years ago – they were the world leaders in word processing. They had an excellent minicomputer range also, but the company was run by old men and they failed to see the threat from the IBM PC and Wordperfect. Wang disappeared altogether in 2 years…

RIM had a great solution but, like everyone else, they failed to see, and then failed to answer, the threat from Apple. They are in good company: HP, Dell, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, the entire music industry and many others…

And they will be joined by the TV manufacturers, the cable TV companies, the Telecoms and many others whose markets will be targeted by Apple in the years to come…

It’s just like Palm transitioning too late to WebOS, which killed them, as they got stuck trying to launch on Sprint, when they really needed to get on Verizon. Timing is everything, and when you wait too long, you miss your opportunity.

And, it’s like Nokia transitioning too late to WinPho, which is killing them. No matter how good WinPho is, it’s too late for them to be anything but a weak 3rd player in the market.

And, now it’s Blackberry transitioning too late to QNX, which is killing them. No matter how good it is, people have moved on, and good enough is not enough. It has to be significantly better to regain traction.

“…negatively pre-announce…” What kind of nonsense double-speak is that, anyway? I’ve heard of people positively doing something, using “positively” in the sense of “definitely.” So does this phrase indicate that RIM will “definitely not pre-announce?” That’s one guy who needs a crash course in expository writing and logical fallacies.